Establishing churches in the NT 

Christ is serious about His Church being rooted and built up in Him.    
                                                             
After the Gospel was proclaimed and people were converted, the New Testament puts a great emphasis on forming churches and those churches becoming established. The word used commonly in the New Testament letters to the churches that expresses this idea is the Greek word steridzo, which means to establish or strengthen. This was the very purpose the letters to the churches were written by the Apostles.  A study of the word used in Acts and the Epistles shows what the New Testament concept of establishing churches consisted of[1]. Here is a summary of the concept in these passages.

After disciples are brought together in committed partnership in a newly planted local church, the Apostles and their team members place a priority on an ongoing process of strengthening them in the teaching and practice of their new identity as the Household of Christ. The Apostles main concern is an ongoing faithfulness that does not waver in adversity to the darkness around them or the attacks within them so that they press on in the faith and advance the Gospel of Christ for the glory of His kingdom. The Apostles make it clear to the new disciples and the churches that they should not be surprised about adversity and affliction. Suffering is not to be avoided, rather it is the necessary forming process they must go through to enter the kingdom of God as it was for the Head of the Body, the Lord Jesus Christ. Hearts that are steadied and comforted and unified in the eternal truths of their new identity and purpose become the thrust of the letters and visits the apostles and their representatives make to the New Testament churches.

This receives priority in the New Testament even to the pausing of open doors to new Gospel possibilities if an existing church needed to be strengthened (2 Cor. 2:12-14). The apostles understood that it was wiser in the long run to strengthen an existing church first before pursuing other opportunities because existing churches are to be beachheads and bases for bringing the gospel to the new frontiers.
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In order to establish and strengthen the churches it is key that they understand the eternal purpose the church has been appointed for--the church displays the glory of God in His multifaceted wisdom to the seen and unseen universe. Because of its great purpose, the Church must grasp Christ’s majestic plan for Her and see all of life from that fixed navigation point. In order to provide additional stability and leadership to the Household of God, qualified elders are appointed to teach the glories of Christ and His church to transform them by the Spirit and the Word into the likeness of Christ, and to lead the advance of the Gospel through disciples being made and churches planted and strengthened in accordance with Christ’s commission.
The continued pattern of the New Testament process of establishing churches can be summarized in the following activities.

• After the Holy Spirit converts people through the proclamation of the risen Christ, the people were gathered into a new family where they were strengthened in the new life they had in Christ as a church (Acts 14:21-22).
• Leaders were identified and appointed in the new church to guide and continue the mission (Titus 1:5; Acts 14:23).
• The establishing process was not finished. Additional letters and visits and continued training for men to help in the strengthening deepened and anchored the church (1 Thess. 3; 2 Tim. 2:2).
• The churches were strategic launching points, beachheads, for the advance of the Gospel to new frontiers. Their partnership in the advance of the gospel was crucial to fulfill Christ’s commission, so it was imperative that they were strong and established.
• This process is repeated in the new frontiers for the glory of Christ.

 
Christ loves His church enough to see Her not stay as infants in a spiritual nursery, but to mature to growing Christlikeness, rooted and built up in Him.
Do I? Do we?
 
-Pastor Jamie


[1] Acts 14:21-23; 15:36-16:5; 18:22-23; Eph. 3:8-10; Rom. 1:8-15; 16:25-27; 1 Thess. 3:1-13; 2 Thess. 2:17; Titus 1:5; 1 Tim. 3:14-16

• Know that the greatest hindrance to missions is a weak sending church and put major effort into establishing the church as the Pastoral Epistles direct.
  

• Understand the task of missions is to evangelize strategically, establish congregations by instructing disciples and forming them in the context of the local church, and entrusting them to faithful leaders who will replicate this process.
  

• Support the centrality of the local church in the role of commissioning and sending equipping leaders for church establishment and expansion in mission work.
  

• Identify faithful men who can be trusted with the kerygma and didache with the process of testing, training, and affirming their entrustment.
  

• See multiplication of churches as the form of expansion of the church and the Gospel rather than simply building bigger and bigger churches.
  

• Expect that the bulk of mission work, that the church partners with and supports, agrees and practices these principles. 
  

• Partners in missions should have proved themselves in their local church in character and competency.
  

                        -They should be recognized by their local church as elders if they are going to be engaged in appointing other                                     leaders over the church(es).

                       -They should see their primary allegiance and accountability to their local sending church rather than their mission                          board or organization.

                        -They should be committed to the establishment, growth, and expansion of local churches, and their role as a tool                          that is not indispensable in that process.

                        -They should be diligently working on passing on the baton to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Christ is the Head of the church. He has revealed his plan for the world through the administration of the church, the household of God, according to Ephesians 3.

A local church needs to filter partnership with a parachurch organization through the lens of the household order of the church. Here are several rough guidelines that will follow then in working with parachurch organizations.

·         The parachurch organization must recognize that they are not the local church, cannot function as a local church, or cause the local church to function as a parachurch organization. The parachurch organization is a manmade structure created out of response to a context. It is not an eternal organism as the church is.

·         The parachurch organization must have a strong understanding and commitment to the gospel.

·         The parachurch organization must serve the church as their high calling. This must not just be on paper, but in their practice.

·         The parachurch organization exists to protect the church and its purity of truth and love by providing resources or opportunities that advance local churches rather than stifling them.

·         The parachurch organization defers to the authority to the local church in issues that are the biblical missionary work of planting and establishing churches through evangelism, forming churches, and passing on the deposit to faithful men who will shepherd the local churches.

·         The teams that work under the organization have been commended by the local church and its leadership.

·         The parachurch organization defers to the authority of the local church and the local church, at the same time, recognizes that when the church participates with them, it operates voluntarily under the guidelines of the organization for the purpose of common ministry betterment.

• Paul’s principles of evangelizing strategically, establishing congregations, and entrusting to appointed elders seems to be the normative process for Christ’s Church for the following reasons:
  

• His authorization
  

o   Ephesians 3:8-11 explains the unique role among the Apostles that God had given to Paul.  Paul is to declare the mystery of the administration of the household plan of God. The order for the oikonomia has been passed by the Spirit to Paul to outline in his instructions for the churches. Jew and Gentile are fellow heirs of the unfathomable riches if Christ and formed into one new man and Paul has been chosen divinely to be the person responsible to make plain the household order, house law, administration, stewardship, plan, or administration of the Household of God. Understanding and abiding by the Household order for the churches is so important that it is the very vehicle the glory of God is put up for and displayed. This household of God and how it is to operate has been God’s eternal plan and purpose since before the creation of the world. Paul’s instructions and principles for the establishment of the churches cannot be underestimated and his principles are to continue in order to reflect the same priority in the proper order of the churches so that God is glorified as His wisdom is put on display. There is strong normative authority therefore that is derived from this text.

• His application
  

(In Acts)

§  In Acts 14, after Paul has evangelized and gathered disciples, he has them instructed in the faith to foster perseverance in their Christian lives, and then prays and fasts to select Elders to shepherd over them.

§  In Acts 20, Paul rehearses his process and then turns it over to the Ephesian elders in the entrustment stage with the understanding that this to be continued in perpetuity—evangelize strategically, establish congregations, entrust to faithful shepherds over the congregation to continue the process. Paul anticipates this is to continue with no end to it  (just as Christ did-“until the end of the age.”).
 
(In his epistles) 

§  Titus 1:5 shows us that the work in Crete that remained that Titus was designated to complete fits the stages of the process of Paul’s strategy of evangelizing strategically, establishing congregations, and entrusting to shepherding elders. Evangelization had resulted in congregations that needed more establishing and Paul ask Titus to appoint elders over the congregations to continue the shepherding and establishing process. These elders would d be entrusted to continue the work Paul had begun.

§  Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:14-15 that he is writing so that Timothy will be able to tell the church how to conduct themselves as the household of God. Paul is referring to the local churches. These verses come on the heels of the preceding verses in which Paul has laid out the leadership qualifications for the Household of God who would have the care over the local church/ It is only as the Household of God conducts themselves in the proper conduct of the household order that their testimony of faithfulness will lend to their witness to the truth in the world and the basis of presenting the gospel as evidence of Gospel change from reprobates afar off into redeemed brothers and sisters held together in the Household of God for the display of God’s wisdom to the watching world. Again, evangelism has occurred, congregations are being established as leaders (such as Timothy) are entrusted to continue the process.

§  Even in the last days of Paul’s ministry, Paul is imploring Timothy to continue this normative process in 2 Timothy 2:2 as he asks him to pass the baton through the entrusting of the deposit (1:13-14) to men whose character would be observed within the Household as faithful. Paul describes 4 generations and leaves it open-ended with the assumption of this entrusting to continue until the return of Christ. This puts great thrust into the normative understanding of Paul’s principles of evangelizing, establishing congregations, and entrusting the deposit to faithful shepherds. This entrusting is not just teaching but living the teachings of Christ and His Apostles and, if need be, dying for them.